So about that election...

I've been feeling quite uninspired of late to write anything and for those who might have been cheking in here every so often - surely having given up waiting for me to post something undoubtedly - I'm sorry for this lack of literary output. It comes in waves and so when the sea is calm the idea of forcing myself to write something for the sake of writing has little appeal for me. Hopefully this will soon change.

I should have written more about the recent Canadian election during and in its immediate aftermath, but whatever my opinions were seemed to have been more eloquently put by others. So it is with a commentary I just had the fortune to find online by the inimicable Rex Murphy concerning a certain American's intrusion into the Canadian electoral debate. I expressed the same opinion to various friends, but he says it so damn well that I'll defer to him (thanks to Google News for bypassing the Globe & Mail's subscriber wall):

Well, it was a narrow escape. But we did it. Canadians have preserved their liberties and independence against the always rapacious American beast.

We knew there were powerful elements in the United States that wanted us to kowtow and genuflect to a simplistic worldview, that knuckle-dragging Good-versus-Evil script they have been remorselessly propagandizing all over the world since 9/11.

They have been trying to drag Canada into this simpleton's game for years, mauling truth and banishing nuance with a continuous stream of invective posing as reason, and caricature passing itself off as accuracy.

It's a difficult thing to resist the mighty United States at any time, and especially difficult in all the dust and storm of a national election. But we did it.

It was a close-run thing. But on Monday night, Canada fought back and won. On Jan. 20, just three days before our vote, Michael Moore, entrepreneur, fabulist, philosophe, issued a broadside to the citizens of this country warning us sternly, and with the imperious irony of which he is so fully a master, against the perils of electing a Stephen Harper government:
Do you want to help George Bush by turning Canada into his latest conquest? Is that how you want millions of us down here to see you from now on? The next notch on the cowboy belt?

I was worried at first that the subtlety of the pitch might obscure its wonderful impertinence — worried that the charm of Mr. Moore's address might distract Canadians from the consideration that an American millionaire celebrity pitchman was interfering in, and attempting to influence, the Canadian vote.

I was worried, too, that this one-man shock-and-awe “documentarian” might be leading a charge, that the other bright bulbs of international busybodyism were massed behind his formidable massed behind. Was Sean Penn on the way to monitor the vote in Etobicoke? Was he planning one of his patented fact-finding junkets like the visits that brought such comfort and peace to the citizens of Baghdad? I could see the headlines: Penn in Halifax. Visits Bar. Reads Construction-Site Posters. Warns Harper is Christian. Says “God Bless Canada.”

Well, that didn't happen. We're were spared the fast-food internationalism of Mr. Penn, and that probably meant we were spared assorted sermons from Alex Baldwin, Janeane Garofalo, Al Franken and that whole posse of celebrity dilettantes who see the whole world as an audience for their inch-deep, paint-by-numbers, cause-a-day homilies. Maybe they were off somewhere saving a seal.

Or, what is much more likely, maybe he concluded there was really no need for the secondary battalions. We, the respectful, bland and polite citizens of a country that is really only a farm team for the U.S. entertainment industry — hello Céline, Jim, Dan and Avril — would naturally be flattered into sheer insensibility that the portentous Mr. Moore even knew we were having an election. He has a taste for insolence, referring to Stephen Harper, who has more brain than Michael Moore has girth, as someone “who should be running for governor of Utah,“ and whose election would “reduce Canada to a cheap download of Bush & Co.”

One size fits all — that's our Mikey. Because he thinks he has a problem with George Bush, that must be the script for the rest of the world. This is the very essence of imperialism. To believe that your story is everyone else's. To believe that your political drama is the template for every other political drama in the whole wide world. Michael Moore could go to Fogo Island, Nfld., for the municipal elections and find them a perfect parable of the Halliburton super-conspiracy. He'd see Dick Cheney's influence in the selection of the town clerk.

Ego turns the world into one big mirror, and nothing looks back at the celebrity narcissus but the vacant monomaniac staring in. News flash, Mr. Moore: Our election wasn't about Dick Cheney. Or George Bush. Paul Martin (thank God) isn't Bill Clinton. Stephen Harper doesn't own a decoder ring sent him by Karl Rove. Considering the success you've had in stopping George Bush in the country where he actually runs — and on last report he is in his second term — do you really think you should be sparing the time and the shavings of your wit to offer advice to others?

George Bush got three million votes more than John Kerry in the last U.S. presidential election. Karl Rove is on bended knee every day in thanks for the contribution Fahrenheit 9/11 made to that surplus. If you can't win your own elections, Michael, what made you think you had anything to say about ours?

Other than that, I'm glad you called. But we defied you. Stephen Harper is prime minister, and I suppose that tells you all you need to know, which is: Canadians don't care what you think you think.

I know this will annoy all my friends on the Left, but I am indeed glad that the Conservatives won. For me it came down to my belief that the Liberals had to lose; they'd be in power too long and it had obviously corrupted them far past the point to anymore deserve the trust of Canadians. Though I am a supporter of same-sex marriage (and some other policies usually thought of as leftist), that's not what this election was about. Rather, the absolute importance in a democratic system for there to be at least two competing parties with a realistic chance of forming the government. Ever since the Progressive Conservative's 1993 blowout, through over 12 years of Liberal party rule (mostly having a majority in Parliament), that has not been the case. Nothing, in my opinion, was more important in this election than helping to restore this so necessary balance. And in the year and a half or so that Paul Martin has been Prime Minister, he has shown indecision instead of decisiveness, desperation instead of leadership and dishonesty instead of directness. All of these negatives were only made more obvious in the pressure of the campaign as the Liberal's scare tactics (being the entirety of their message) - vote for us because Stephen Harper's scary! - were found wanting. The Liberal Party has for years now been almost devoid of any passion other than holding onto power at all cost. A few years on the opposition benches should give them time and space to do some much needed thinking as to what exactly they stand for instead of madly careening from Left to Right saying whatever they think will offer the best political advantage as Paul Martin has shown himself wont to do.

Same-sex marriage is here to stay. Harper has commited to allowing a free vote if the issue is debated by Parliament and those who would like to preserve the "traditional" definition of marriage don't have the votes to make that happen; let alone use the Not-Withstanding clause of the Charter. As for implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, another reason given to not vote Conservative, the Liberal's hypocrisy knows no bounds in criticizing the Bush Administration for not going along with it and the Conservatives for not wanting to go along with it when they themselves have so far done little to reduce carbon dioxide emmisions. Even though the USA hasn't signed onto the deal they've done a better job than Canada has in reducing CO2 emmisions since the Liberal's have been in power.

The Canadian political scene just got a whole lot more interesting anyways. The question is now whether Harper will follow in the footsteps on John Diefenbaker - turning a minority into a massive majority in a year - or Joe Clark - losing a minority in nine months to a resurgent Pierre Trudeau. We can only wait and see...